The Supreme Court on Tuesday shut down Good Lawgic’s podcast founder Joseph Nierman’s request to lift former President Donald Trump’s gag order in his Manhattan hush-money proceedings where the former president awaits sentencing.
Without comment, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees requests out of New York, denied the podcaster’s request for the high court to take up the case.
A lower court had rejected the case, prompting Mr. Nierman, who is a member of the New York press, to take his argument to the Supreme Court on an emergency application to lift the gag order.
Mr. Nierman, who airs his podcast on his YouTube channel “Good Lawgic,” petitioned the high court on Friday, asking for Mr. Trump’s gag order to be scrapped so that the former president can speak publicly on what critics say are potential conflicts of interest of New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan and his family members.
“Good Lawgic and Nierman argued that the gag orders violated the Petitioners’ freedom of press rights the moment they were entered. More specifically, Good Lawgic’s press inquiry to President Trump about Judge Merchan’s relatives could not receive a response, and Good Lawgic was deprived of an interview of President Trump for such reason as well,” the podcaster’s filing read.
There have been accusations that Loren Merchan, the daughter of the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s New York case, leads a progressive consulting firm, Authentic Campaigns, that had profited from the state’s prosecution of Mr. Trump.
Allies of the former president have argued Judge Merchan should have recused himself because of his daughter’s work for a marketing firm that was profiting from the prosecution, and that the judge himself had donated to President Biden, who was the presumed Democratic nominee and thus Mr. Trump’s November opponent during the trial.
A New York regulation requires that a judge must recuse if someone within the sixth degree of relation has an interest in the proceeding.
But Judge Merchan stayed on the case and issued a gag order against Mr. Trump preventing him from commenting about the court, its family members, prosecutors and witnesses during the trial. Even after being found guilty, Mr. Trump remains unable to comment about the court, the prosecutors or their families even after his conviction.
His sentencing — following his May conviction over hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign — is set for Nov 26.
He was found guilty of all 34 counts in a historic first — the criminal conviction of a former president.
Prosecutors led by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Mr. Trump used personal attorney Michael Cohen to pay $130,000 to Ms. Daniels before the 2016 presidential election because she was shopping a story about an alleged extramarital sexual encounter with Mr. Trump in Lake Tahoe in 2006.
They argued it ran afoul of a New York law concerning falsifying business records with the intent to conceal a crime.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.